AdmiralJim wrote:I am talking about the illness not the pain, they are different.

The experience of illness is due to karma:

And what is kamma that is dark & bright with dark & bright result? There is the case where a certain person fabricates a bodily fabrication that is injurious & uninjurious... a verbal fabrication that is injurious & uninjurious... a mental fabrication that is injurious & uninjurious... He rearises in an injurious & uninjurious world where he is touched by injurious & uninjurious contacts... He experiences injurious & uninjurious feelings, pleasure mingled with pain, like those of human beings, some devas, and some beings in the lower realms. This is called kamma that is dark & bright with dark & bright result.

- — AN 4.232

How foolish you are, grasping the letter of the text and ignoring its intention! - Vasubandhu

There are cases where some feelings arise based on bile, based on phlegm, based on internal winds, based on a combination of bodily humours, from the change of season, from uneven care of the body, from harsh treatment and from the result of kamma.Sutta Nipata 36;2

The argument you are using is pretty much what is being used to justify the caste system in India and how others suffer misfortune. Not all suffering arises due to karma.

AdmiralJim wrote:There are cases where some feelings arise based on bile, based on phlegm, based on internal winds, based on a combination of bodily humours, from the change of season, from uneven care of the body, from harsh treatment and from the result of kamma.Sutta Nipata 36;2

Point taken.

[The Buddha:] "There are cases where some feelings arise based on bile.[1] You yourself should know how some feelings arise based on bile. Even the world is agreed on how some feelings arise based on bile. So any priests & contemplatives who are of the doctrine & view that whatever an individual feels — pleasure, pain, neither-pleasure-nor-pain — is entirely caused by what was done before — slip past what they themselves know, slip past what is agreed on by the world. Therefore I say that those priests & contemplatives are wrong."

However, the pain that one feels and is accompanied by illness is due to karma.

The argument you are using is pretty much what is being used to justify the caste system in India and how others suffer misfortune.

No, which is why the Buddha overturned and was against the caste system.

How foolish you are, grasping the letter of the text and ignoring its intention! - Vasubandhu

I don't really understand what you are saying. are you saying that illness sometimes isn't caused by karma but that pain always is? oh well I now know how to comfort the patients I used to look after, sorry love your excruiating pain is caused by karma not the huge stones rolling around your kidneys LOL

AdmiralJim wrote:I don't really understand what you are saying. are you saying that illness sometimes isn't caused by karma but that pain always is? oh well I now know how to comfort the patients I used to look after, sorry love your excruiating pain is caused by karma not the huge stones rolling around your kidneys LOL

The sensation of physical pain, illness or not is always caused by the ripening of negative karma as I cited in the Abhidharmakosabhasyam. Just because you don't like it, don't wrongly state it isn't the Buddhist POV - it is.

How foolish you are, grasping the letter of the text and ignoring its intention! - Vasubandhu

since when have I said that it isn't the buddhist point of view, I am trying to understand so no need to be rude. To be honest I wasn't even sure their was a unified 'Buddhist point of view, I don't think there is. So we shouldn't give painkillers as that will reduce the 'experience of the karma,' guessing that all those people born before effective pain relief must have had real 'purification' going on

This discussion reminds me of the Catholic concept of original sin. Being punished for what has went before, the only difference being it is somehow linked to previous lives which I don't understand because if there is no self then I see no reason for a retributive effect on something that comes after. Confused

AdmiralJim wrote:This discussion reminds me of the Catholic concept of original sin. Being punished for what has went before, the only difference being it is somehow linked to previous lives which I don't understand because if there is no self then I see no reason for a retributive effect on something that comes after. Confused

I think if you study the Abhidharmakosabhasyam you would find it beneficial.

How foolish you are, grasping the letter of the text and ignoring its intention! - Vasubandhu

AdmiralJim wrote:This discussion reminds me of the Catholic concept of original sin. Being punished for what has went before, the only difference being it is somehow linked to previous lives which I don't understand because if there is no self then I see no reason for a retributive effect on something that comes after. Confused

If you experience pain and suffer because of it, its due to Karma. if you experience pain but do not suffer because of it, thats also due to Karma. The first is bad Karma, the second is good Karma, or at least something neutral. The reason you can't imagine pain without suffering is because your not viewing pain as empty, you identify yourself as being the pain, or with the pain, and by imputing this upon the pain you become the pain, then you say "I am in pain" and as a result of this identification you suffer, because you A) Believe there is a self and B) Believe that self is in pain and C) Want that pain to therefore stop.

If you have no self, who is there to feel the pain? Without a self, things arise, but they just are. You have bliss or pain, and there it is, you are neither of these, but they are present. You feel joy or sorrow, but because you refrain from identifying with them, you are not attached to the first and are not averse to the second. Its attachment and aversion that create suffering. Transcending bad Karma does not mean you will never feel pain, it means you won't believe the pain is actually happening to an independently existing entity you call "self".

It comes down to getting what we don't want as a cause for suffering. If we have no aversion to pain, we can't suffer when it arrives.